Dallas Observer

Our papers

If you want to know what’s happening in Dallas, keep your eye on the Observer.

Since its founding in 1980, the Observer has grown from a small weekly newspaper to a major force in Dallas, known for its hard-edged investigative stories about government, politics and business, as well as its pointed and provocative coverage of sports, music and the arts.

Along the way, the Observer has collected numerous journalism awards, including first-place finishes in investigative reporting and environmental reporting in the 2015 Association for Alternative Newsmedia Awards, as well as honors from the James Beard Journalism Awards and the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists.

And the Observer has rolled out some of the city’s best live events, including its massively popular St. Patrick’s Day Concert and the Dallas Observer Brewfest, where thousands of attendees sample more than 400 beers from around the globe as well as live music and food from local vendors.

The Observer’s early embrace of the web allowed it to develop an online audience long before most alt-weeklies understood what a blog was. Today, dallasobserver.com draws more than 1 million monthly active users, while, every Thursday, 42,000 print copies land on newsstands around the city – and disappear within hours.

The paper has had some fun, too. Long before Jon Stewart started The Daily Show, the Observer was a fearless practitioner of political satire. In fact, one of its pieces of parody went all the way to the Texas Supreme Court – which ruled in its favor. As a result, humor, parody and political satire are now officially protected speech in the Lone Star State

Today the Observer remains an integral part of the DFW metroplex. And its sense of humor remains intact.